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Keeping ahead of crop diseases and pests is a continual challenge, particularly as climate and weather patterns change. This challenge is in part compounded by the involvement of governments around the world in in subsidizing the consumption of certain crop staples like rice and in subsidizing crop research.

The New York Times has published an article that blames cutbacks in research on new rice varieties to a growing threat to rice crops posed by new diseases and pests.

Should the West respond with more subsidies to research for crops grown in poor countries, or with less subsidies and greater reliance on private incentives that already exist in Western markets? Are there private researchers that are stepping into the gap?